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Hey, what's that (and other miscellanea)?


sparky05

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3 hours ago, walker said:

I imagine it is because the density is from all the tourist hotels along the beach front.

Why does Balneario Camboriu look like a huge city despite such a small area?

Might be an interesting place to visit for a few day.  I don't think I'd want to live there. 

Exactly, no thanks. We think crime and poverty are bad here....

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Exactly, no thanks. We think crime and poverty are bad here....
These places also tend to be soulless tourist traps with no culture. I'll take a modest skyline over hotel high rises. Hell, I'd take a city of 4-6 story buildings as long as it had all the amenities spread out in a walkable fashion.

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9 hours ago, 54equalsunity said:

These places also tend to be soulless tourist traps with no culture. I'll take a modest skyline over hotel high rises. Hell, I'd take a city of 4-6 story buildings as long as it had all the amenities spread out in a walkable fashion.

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Wanting a bunch of towers and not caring about the soul of the city, could that be called "urban vanity?" :)

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Cant we have both? I love height and tourists. They spend money and fun things tend to get built to accommodate them. I love vibrant street life too.

Well of course! I was just coming at it from "which of the two would I prefer" thinking. I think Grand Rapids does do a good job of having a unique skyline and attracting tourists. Any time I talk to people who live on the east side they always have a story about themselves or someone they know coming to visit.

 

Also, to support my love of our skyline: when I was going to school in Big Rapids I would make a point of taking 131/196 through town instead of 96 on my way back and forth from Flint just to see the skyline.

 

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35 minutes ago, 54equalsunity said:

Well of course! I was just coming at it from "which of the two would I prefer" thinking. I think Grand Rapids does do a good job of having a unique skyline and attracting tourists. Any time I talk to people who live on the east side they always have a story about themselves or someone they know coming to visit.

 

Also, to support my love of our skyline: when I was going to school in Big Rapids I would make a point of taking 131/196 through town instead of 96 on my way back and forth from Flint just to see the skyline.

 

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Flints skyline took a hit when they brought down Genesee Towers. It was needed, but man would I have liked to have seen that building saved and modernized somehow

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Across the street from GRCC's Spectrum Theater on Fountain, there appears to be something taking place. It was all dug up with some excavation equipment on hand.

 

From Google maps it looks like it is the land for their daycare (?) playground, which I dont think they actually need anymore. Cant really find anything on their website that really explains what is happening.

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On ‎8‎/‎18‎/‎2019 at 3:53 PM, ironyisadeadscene said:

Maybe I'm weird, but I like my height in a centralized location and now spread out like that. 

I'm weird too; let's consider prodding our leaders to do that quickly but on GR's different-scale riverfront as planned.  Imagine all future dense/vertical development restricted to the natural bowl of the Grand River Valley between Ann Street on the north, Burton Street on the south, Lafayette on the east and Seward on the west.  A contained compact ribbon of urban instigated by the 201 Market/Flaherty-Collins setup: 

Flaherty & Collins_201 Market_South Downtown Grand Rapids 2.jpg

Flaherty & Collins_201 Market_South Downtown Grand Rapids 1.jpg

Grand River Valley_Dedicated Urban Development District for City of GR and surrounding Metro Triplex.JPG

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24 minutes ago, metrogrkid said:

I'm weird too; let's consider prodding our leaders to do that quickly but on GR's different-scale riverfront as planned.  Imagine all future dense/vertical development restricted to the natural bowl of the Grand River Valley between Ann Street on the north, Burton Street on the south, Lafayette on the east and Seward on the west.  A contained compact ribbon of urban instigated by the 201 Market/Flaherty-Collins setup: 

Flaherty & Collins_201 Market_South Downtown Grand Rapids 2.jpg

Flaherty & Collins_201 Market_South Downtown Grand Rapids 1.jpg

Grand River Valley_Dedicated Urban Development District for City of GR and surrounding Metro Triplex.JPG

I'm all for it. The above proposal HAS to happen. That is stunning.

I also think that when (if) that project happens, the Fulton/Market lot will be developed. There are long term plans for it.

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5 hours ago, metrogrkid said:

I'm weird too; let's consider prodding our leaders to do that quickly but on GR's different-scale riverfront as planned.  Imagine all future dense/vertical development restricted to the natural bowl of the Grand River Valley between Ann Street on the north, Burton Street on the south, Lafayette on the east and Seward on the west.  A contained compact ribbon of urban instigated by the 201 Market/Flaherty-Collins setup: 

Flaherty & Collins_201 Market_South Downtown Grand Rapids 2.jpg

Flaherty & Collins_201 Market_South Downtown Grand Rapids 1.jpg

Grand River Valley_Dedicated Urban Development District for City of GR and surrounding Metro Triplex.JPG

So at the rate the city is going with selling and getting 201 Market redeveloped, and with current market absorption, you'll have your "Vancouver on the Grand River" sometime in about 50 years. :P 

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7 hours ago, GRDadof3 said:

So at the rate the city is going with selling and getting 201 Market redeveloped, and with current market absorption, you'll have your "Vancouver on the Grand River" sometime in about 50 years. :P 

The haterade and ever-present snark are strong in this one . . . .  :tw_smirk:

Edited by metrogrkid
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12 hours ago, ironyisadeadscene said:

I'm all for it. The above proposal HAS to happen. That is stunning.

I also think that when (if) that project happens, the Fulton/Market lot will be developed. There are long term plans for it.

SAY THAT!  The Fulton/Market lot arguably has some of the greatest development potential in the entirety of Greater Downtown (especially with its ready-to-plug-in skywalk connection node).  That double high-rise/mixed-use podium building concept from back in the day was thinking in the right direction.

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4 hours ago, metrogrkid said:

SAY THAT!  The Fulton/Market lot arguably has some of the greatest development potential in the entirety of Greater Downtown (especially with its ready-to-plug-in skywalk connection node).  That double high-rise/mixed-use podium building concept from back in the day was thinking in the right direction.

Do you have a rendering for that? I never heard about that!

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7 hours ago, ironyisadeadscene said:

Do you have a rendering for that? I never heard about that!

LET THE SCREAM BEGIN: The likelihood of me locating that is VERY low....especially since it was on a laptop that failed years ago?  :tw_grimace:  However, I can describe its basic setup from memory:  the footprint basically took up the whole Fulton/Market site (minus the riverfront area for a Riverwalk extension) with a variable height 5- to 10-story podium building (encasing/hiding a central multi-hundreds of spaces parking ramp), a 52-story hotel/office tower at the Fulton/Market corner (facing Fulton & Plaza Towers), a 42-story hotel/housing tower also at Fulton/Market corner (facing Market), a major retail atrium below both towers (basically providing pass-through/replacement space for current skywalk access node).  There it is (was) to the best of my memory.

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1 hour ago, metrogrkid said:

LET THE SCREAM BEGIN: The likelihood of me locating that is VERY low....especially since it was on a laptop that failed years ago?  :tw_grimace:  However, I can describe its basic setup from memory:  the footprint basically took up the whole Fulton/Market site (minus the riverfront area for a Riverwalk extension) with a variable height 5- to 10-story podium building (encasing/hiding a central multi-hundreds of spaces parking ramp), a 52-story hotel/office tower at the Fulton/Market corner (facing Fulton & Plaza Towers), a 42-story hotel/housing tower also at Fulton/Market corner (facing Market), a major retail atrium below both towers (basically providing pass-through/replacement space for current skywalk access node).  There it is (was) to the best of my memory.

From what I've heard and what you described, things havent changed that much.

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On 8/20/2019 at 7:14 PM, GR_Urbanist said:

Across the street from GRCC's Spectrum Theater on Fountain, there appears to be something taking place. It was all dug up with some excavation equipment on hand.

 

From Google maps it looks like it is the land for their daycare (?) playground, which I dont think they actually need anymore. Cant really find anything on their website that really explains what is happening.

Maybe this?

unnamed.png

 

Not a whole lot of information available.

 

Quote

 

The A Broader Vision Campaign aims to raise $15 million dollars for capital improvements and scholarships for the college. I am happy to report that, to date, $13.9 million of the $15 million goal has been raised!

The A Broader Vision campaign will fund three challenges:

 
Challenge #1: Renovate Raleigh J. Finkelstein Hall
5803ccbc-d4c1-4bdf-b7d3-54da0e079746.jpg
 
Challenge 2: Revitalize the Wisner-Bottrall Applied Technology Center
Rendering of new addition to ATC Building
 
Challenge 3: Strengthening Scholarship Funding

 


https://www.grcc.edu/abroadervision/15541

 
Edited by tSlater
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6 hours ago, ironyisadeadscene said:

From what I've heard and what you described, things havent changed that much.

More understated words were never spoken.  Certain things about GR's nature can make one's teeth itch but hey, we're still #52 metro in America.  yay. woo hoo.

4 hours ago, joeDowntown said:

I don’t remember this. Was it ever public knowledge? I have most architectural graveyard renderings burned into my head. :)

Joe

It was the concept that was put online and then suddenly yanked when it started creating buzz; it was just prior to the debut of the Monroe/Market Streetrail concept (whenever that was).  I can't remember the firm though, dangit. :tw_angry: Bad memory sucks big.

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9 hours ago, metrogrkid said:

More understated words were never spoken.  Certain things about GR's nature can make one's teeth itch but hey, we're still #52 metro in America.  yay. woo hoo.

It was the concept that was put online and then suddenly yanked when it started creating buzz; it was just prior to the debut of the Monroe/Market Streetrail concept (whenever that was).  I can't remember the firm though, dangit. :tw_angry: Bad memory sucks big.

Ok, yes, I remember it now. They also had a rendering for a conceptual building near Crescent park. To me, these were always explorations by the architect picking spots they new and envisioning a new use (I remember them doing a nice concept for the underutilized strip mall at Cascade and 28th). Unless someone has intel that these were commissioned concepts?

Joe

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1 hour ago, joeDowntown said:

Ok, yes, I remember it now. They also had a rendering for a conceptual building near Crescent park. To me, these were always explorations by the architect picking spots they new and envisioning a new use (I remember them doing a nice concept for the underutilized strip mall at Cascade and 28th). Unless someone has intel that these were commissioned concepts?

Joe

I have no intel.  I picture that this might have been drawn by someone at Visbeen while they were attending a really long boring mandatory meeting.  They’d look like they were busy taking notes while they’d really just be passing time daydreaming and drawing for their own amusement.  Who hasn't done something like that?    

Edited by walker
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